Ron Quixote
by obstacle1
Summary: There are few tales which can outdo the legend of The Boy-Who-Lived, but Ron Weasley might just have found one... Join him on his adventures as an unremarkable Gryffindor becomes the most celebrated wizard-errant of his age, with the help of his squire, Sancho Hanza, and his trusted steed, Goatinante! Warning: will get progressively crackier


**Chapter 1: Ron Quixote's First Sally**

Harry Potter was feeling somewhat put out with life at Hogwarts. Numerous attempts on his life, the repetitive antics of Ron and Hermione, and Voldemort's rise to power had dampened his spirits somewhat. The result of this was some rather predictable teenage angst, brooding, and trying to look as forlorn as possible. Needless to say, his fellow classmates found this extremely tedious. Fortunately, we need not concern ourselves with the woes of our Pottery protagonist, for we are focusing instead on a remarkable train of events surrounding his oft overlooked sidekick, Ron Weasley.

The boy in question was currently sat in Potions beside Harry, attempting to brew a Befuddlement Draught and engage in a verbal spar with Draco Malfoy, who had shifted the focus of his vitriol to the redhead following Harry's sustained aloofness.

Draco waltzed over to Ron's cauldron in as carefree a manner as he could. Ron's potion was currently dark green, some way from the translucent, emerald hue the textbook detailed. Draco scrutinised the mixture. "What have we here, Weasley?" he said, feigning interest. Ron's grip on his stirring rod tightened. "Another mediocre attempt at brewing, it would seem". The redhead's expression darkened. The Slytherin chuckled softly, and returned to his own concoction.

"A shame, considering the ingredients used were probably worth more than your father makes in a year", he said in a lofty tone across the room that Ron couldn't fail to hear. But having been exposed to Draco's insults for the best part of five years, he had developed some measure of restraint, and managed to remain mute. This only goaded Draco on.

"Poor, poor Weasley", he intoned, emphasising the adjective. Crabbe and Goyle snickered. "Maybe you'll get lucky later, and the mudblood will console you. I hear she's lowered her prices so even scum like you –"

Regrettably, whatever witty snippet Draco was intending to finish his diatribe with was lost forever as Ron, ignoring Hermione's attempt to mollify him, snatched his wand from the desk beside him and hurled a Leg-Locker Curse towards Draco. Draco ducked the spell and returned fire with a silent, sickly yellow spell that struck Ron in the midriff. He doubled over, gasping for air, before stumbling forward, and tumbling headfirst into Neville's cauldron.

Every Gryffindor and Slytherin sixth year without a face full of Befuddlement Draught held their breath. Ron tried to regain his. Snape calmly surveyed the scene; his only sign of acknowledging the incident was to raise an eyebrow, content to wait for more than Ron's shoes to become visible.

This had all gone unnoticed by Harry Potter, who, desperate to escape the monotony of wizarding life, was reminiscing over his primary school career, and longing for the excitement each day of Muggle education had brought. He missed not knowing what form his daily punishments would take, for there were always new and interesting ways found by Dudley's gang to humiliate and debase him. He might suffer blunt trauma from Dudley's ham hands. It could be puncture wounds from Piers, using biros and pencils to draw blood when the teacher's back was turned. Perhaps Dennis would keep some Clingfilm from his packed lunch and try to asphyxiate Harry when he cornered him in the playground at afternoon break.

Our attention must now divert from Harry's halcyon days, for Ron had managed to upright himself in Neville's cauldron. An astute observer would have noticed Ron's demeanour had changed since his brush with befuddlement. In his eyes was a fearful madness, and he held himself with more assurance than a teenage boy at the centre of a humiliating spectacle had any right to. For Ron, whose grip on reason was tenuous at best, had lost the use of it completely.

He envisaged his robes were no longer the scant, second-hand offerings they had been, marked with the telling white stains of young wizards on the cusp of manhood; they were flowing garments, spun from the finest silk, so radiant they would have been commended in the finest magical courts of old Atlantis. His shoes were no longer the scuffed, ratty things they had been; they were hewn from the toughest walrine pelt, so warm and robust they would have been the envy of every Ice Mage learning his art in the frozen wastes of Siberia.

His befuddled mind was filled with myriad tales, of wizard-errantry realised in noble quests, epic conquests and daring plans come to fruition. And he, the latest wizard-errant, would eclipse even Merlin in wizarding feats, so that his name, his mental guile and stoic temperament would be celebrated in every magical settlement in Western Europe.

With this new knowledge, Ron turned his attention to Draco. Such fury and wrath held in his gaze was terrible to behold. "Thou perfidious caitiff!" he cried. Snape's other eyebrow joined the first in the upper reaches of his forehead. Ron's classmates remained mute, in part because the idea of Ronald Weasley approaching eloquence in any form was enough to make anyone pause for thought, but really because they wished to see how this incident would progress.

The Slytherin faction was just as dumfounded at Weasley – who they widely considered to be an accomplished half-wit – and his outburst. Snape and Draco made no effort to intervene on the sodden boy's behalf, giving him an opportunity he duly seized upon. He leapt at Draco, snatching up the boy's wand before he could react. Ron cast his gaze round the room for a window to dispose of Draco's wand. Finding none, which is to be expected in a dungeon, he proceeded to grasp the stick with a hand at either end and brought it down over his knee, snapping the wand clean in two. The pieces were discarded on the dungeon floor.

Giving Draco no time to retaliate our gallant ginger strode purposefully to dungeon door. Before leaving he turned and addressed a now flustered Hermione.

"Lady", quoth he, "your discretion is now at liberty to dispose of your beautiful self as you please; the presumptuous arrogance of he who cast aspersions on thine chastity lies prostate on this stone beneath; and so that you may not be at a loss for the name of your deliverer, know I am called Ron Quixote, by profession a wizard-errant and adventurer." And in finishing his speech, the self-titled wizard-errant spun on his heel, and disappeared from view post-haste.

Hermione Granger was duly flattered, but made envious by this masterful display of rhetoric as she had harboured secret hopes of being the first in her year to quoth, or at the very least, spaketh. In light of Ron's success, she endeavoured to learn from his masterful syntax, and would redouble her efforts to become proficient at the quoth. She glared at Harry, who had missed the whole spectacle, busy as he was gouging at his own forearm with a quill and muttering ominously about the lack of pencils.

By now, Draco had recovered his wits and launched into a full-blooded tirade on Ron's assault, making his grief over the broken wand known to everyone. He demanded Snape place the boy in detention indefinitely to atone for his wrongdoings. His demands went unheeded, for the potions master had a pensive aspect about him, seeming to dwell on Ron's strange behaviour. Dean Thomas began snickering at Draco's predicament, and had to dive to his left as a result to avoid a shouted '_Furnunculus_' from Blaise Zabini. Seamus retaliated with a whispered Confundus charm on Crabbe which found its target and soon enough heavy spellfire was passing between the Gryffindor and Slytherin sixth years.

In the ensuing chaos, no one noticed some nondescript matter crawl out of Neville's cauldron. His attempted Befuddlement Draught had closely resembled a greyish sludge with the consistency of mixed cement. Unfortunately, said sludge happened to gain sentience around the time of Ron's mishap, and managed to work its way out of Neville's cauldron, whence it assumed the shape of a Scuttlefish, scuttling merrily across the stone floor of the dungeons, out the door to its newfound freedom. It would scuttle around undetected for much of the day, until coming into contact with a group of Hufflepuffs making their way to Charms class. By pure coincidence, a girl by the name of Hannah Abbott would trip and fall on a moving staircase at the time of the sludge's arrival, which would promptly be ingested by the poor girl. The end result of all this was for the Hufflepuff to renounce all house allegiance, instead pledging her servitude to our valorous knight, and demanding to be known thenceforth as Sancho Hanza. She intended to follow our noble Gryffindor on many adventures, all of them fantastic and terrible, until such a time when she had amassed treasure and financial assets in keeping with those so kindly bestowed upon her by Mother Nature.

AN: Chapter 2 – What passed between Ron Quixote and the Goatherd, is in the works. So far:

Our valiant hero goes on a quest to be reunited with his noble steed, Goatinante!

Aberforth Dumbleforth seeks revenge on the one who took his lover from him!

Please review!


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